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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28139559">The Great Luck Swap of 1832</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ryolite/pseuds/Ryolite'>Ryolite</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Les Misérables - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Also appearances from, Alternate Universe - Canon Era with Magic, Canon Era, Combeferre (Les Misérables) - Freeform, Don't copy to another site, Established Relationship, Gen, Jehan (Les Miserables) - Freeform, Other, and</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 00:13:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,386</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28139559</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ryolite/pseuds/Ryolite</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Combeferre and Joly acidentally (and magically!) manage to give Bossuet's bad luck to Joly. </p><p>Which means that now Musichetta and a suddenly-lucky Bossuet must find a way to put it back the way it was.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joly/Bossuet Laigle/Musichetta</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Les Mis Holiday Exchange (2020)</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Great Luck Swap of 1832</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/estelraca/gifts">estelraca</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>One of my headcanons for Musichetta is that she's some kind of writer, which kind of worked its way in here. </p><p>The prompt was: <i>Have Joly and Combeferre accidentally exploded something and now Bossuet and Musichetta are patching up the results? Have it be canon era or any kind of crazy AU you want.</i> I kind of ran with both the "crazy AU" and "canon era" bits.</p><p>Hope you enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Jehan is the one to find the spell, which is for something about luck. Joly can’t quite make out the entire title, but it looks interesting, and like it might be close enough to complete to work, which is what makes the fact that Jehan’s giving it to him so weird. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why don’t you do it?” Joly asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s for attracting good luck. I think,” Jehan says. “I thought maybe we could try it on Bossuet. If he wants to.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Joly nods, slowly, and peers at the paper again. Now that he’s heard it, the title does look awfully similar to what Jehan said, only smudged, and half in something that looks like Latin left out to rot. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, Bossuet!” he calls across the room. “Want to participate in a dangerous and luck-related experience with magic that we don’t fully understand?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course,” Bossuet says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Combeferre leans back from where he was talking with Enjolras and Courfeyrac. “Can I help with the magical experimentation?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure.” Joly grins.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They end up doing it in Musichetta’s rooms, because she’s got the largest area not filled with delightfully flammable books and papers (both revolution- and medical-school-or-law-related) and Combeferre and Joly are already banned from the laboratories for the incident with the moths.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Musichetta nearly groans when she remembers it. Her and Bossuet’s coats have never been the same.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The spell itself is simple enough that only Joly and Combeferre actually have to do anything; everyone else ends up as a rapt and apprehensive audience. Musichetta stands near her desk, to protect her books, and Jehan sits cross-legged on the floor, peering at Bossuet through a pane of glass that apparently detects luck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Musichetta makes a mental note to ask about the glass, and also about if Jehan has been hiding a stash of spells. When she’s not trying to supervise the working of a spell that none of the participants have ever done before, though.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The paper says to set up wards first.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bossuet peers at the paper. “Wards? How do you set up those?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No idea,” says Joly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“None of the spells I’ve seen before used wards,” Combeferre says. “Then again, they were mostly medicinal, and more specific than ‘let’s attach some good luck to Bossuet.’”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can I see?” Musichetta says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure.” Joly hands her the paper.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Musichetta squints at it, and then holds it closer to her face—the spell called for blocking all the windows. “There’s this penciled part here,” she says. “In the margin. I think it says something about drawing a line?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve got a pen,” Joly says, and takes it out of his pocket.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Combeferre produces a jar of ink, uncaps it, and squats down. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not on the floor,” Musichetta says, and grabs a ball of yarn from her knitting. “Use this instead. It’ll be close enough to a line that it should work.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Combeferre and Jehan look doubtful.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re welcome to explain ink stains on the floor to my landlord,” Musichetta offers, at which point Combeferre and Jehan remember that landlords exist, and are generally not happy about their tenants staining the floors, which is something that Joly would have thought Combeferre would know from experience. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They use the yarn instead. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s a spoken part, which Combeferre does, and a disgusting part, which Joly does. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or rather, a smear-Bossuet-with-goop-made-out-of-various-plants-stolen-from-various-gardens-and-some-flour-for-some-reason-with-a-feather part, which is really just “a disgusting part” in more words.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s like you’re making some kind of cake,” Bossuet says, which makes not only Joly’s eyes light up, but also Combeferre’s and Jehan’s.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Musichetta resolves to keep a close eye on her kitchenware. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright,” Joly says, trying to get some of the goop off of his hands. “Ready?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Combeferre says, looks around, and starts reading from the paper. When he’s done, he lets the paper fall out of his hand, and breathes hard. Joly does as well, feeling like he’d walked a block on rough streets, and done it without his cane.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well,” Joly says, after a few minutes, “</span>
  <em>
    <span>something</span>
  </em>
  <span> happened, if it took energy from us. Now we just have to see what it was.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Combeferre nods. “Jehan, any changes?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jehan holds the glass in front of Bossuet’s face, looks through it. “Yes, but I’m not sure what they mean.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Joly steps forward to peer through Jehan’s glass, and then—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then there’s some sort of explosion. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It's… substantial. It doesn’t do any damage beyond singeing Joly’s eyebrows, but the split second as it explodes and before their makeshift wards catch it is terrifying.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’re all stunned for a few seconds, but Musichetta is the one to speak first. “What </span>
  <em>
    <span>happened?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I’m not sure,” Combeferre says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bossuet shakes his head. “Wasn’t me. So maybe the spell’s working.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Joly?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Joly picks himself up from the floor. “It was the flour, I think,” he says. “I tripped on it, and must’ve gotten it too close to the fire.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s lucky you did the wards,” Bossuet says, grinning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Very,” Musichetta replies.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They don’t notice any effects until a few days later, but when they do, it’s memorable: Bossuet declines an invitation to go walking in the Jardin des Plantes with Joly and Musichetta.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Musichetta gives him a confused look, and then says, “Why not?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t,” Bossuet says ruefully. “I can’t go anywhere.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Musichetta presses her lips together, in half-serious annoyance. “Why?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My luck’s been too good,” Bossuet explains. “Why just yesterday I forgot my hat in one of my classes, and someone actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>brought it back to me. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Unharmed, too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ve had days without bad luck before,” Joly says. “Besides—maybe it’s the spell working.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bossuet rests his chin on his hand. “Maybe.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If it’s the spell,” Musichetta says, “then you can go, because we know why your luck had been good.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But what if I break the spell, somehow?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Joly says, “That’s a worry of the old, unlucky Bossuet—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m pretty sure I’m the same person.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course! You just don’t have to worry about breaking the spell anymore, because that would be back luck, and you don’t have any of that anymore,” Joly says, nearly falling off his chair in his exuberance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Which Musichetta probably should’ve paid more attention to, because it was such a Bossuet thing to do. Instead, she just attributes it to joy, and says, “I’m sure your luck will hold.”  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It does, actually: they get to the Jardin des Plantes, and manage to have a very nice walk without Bossuet becoming covered in thorns, a rash, or chased out for accidentally crushing something delicate and rare.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Unfortunately, their walk is not entirely without disturbance: Joly manages to become covered in some sticky plant that Musichetta can’t identify.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s medicinal,” Joly starts to explain, as he tries to twist around to remove some of the leaves from his back. “It’s—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Poithonouth,” Bossuet announces, holding out a leaf with a bite-mark in it. “Ith makin my thongue go numb.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Joly’s eyes go wide. “You </span>
  <em>
    <span>ate it?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wanted to thee if it wath poithonouth,” Bossuet says, wiping his tongue with his coat sleeve.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Musichetta sighs, and goes to help extract Joly from the plant’s loving embrace.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The next day, Bossuet’s tongue is no longer numb, but Joly’s entire body is covered in a rash.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It has to be the spell,” Musichetta says the next morning. “Bossuet’s luck is suddenly good, and yours is suddenly bad; it has to have been the spell.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My bad luck giving one last bite,” Bossuet jokes, and then blanches. “Oh, it </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span>, wasn’t it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Probably,” Joly says. “Either that or the ward.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Musichetta grimaces.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Joly pats her knee, and then scratches his palm. “It’s alright—really!—your landlord’s enough of a terror without us putting ink all over your floors.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right,” Musichetta says. “You stay here; Bossuet and I are going to fix this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Bossuet says. “Just don’t move—then my luck can’t get you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Joly laughs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Joly has never considered himself someone with especially </span>
  <em>
    <span>good</span>
  </em>
  <span> luck, but by the end of this, that might change: Bossuet’s luck is just that bad. Not only has he gotten stuck in two downpours, but one of them was on the way to one of the meetings at the Musain, and all the drafted pamphlets he’d been bringing with him to show Enjolras were soaked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s starting to wonder if maybe there was something to the idea of just not leaving his rooms until Musichetta and Bossuet have fixed the whole fiasco.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still, Paris is humming with the fact that there’s going to be a revolution soon. Whispers of it are everyone’s ears, and there’s barely a day that goes by without hidden weapons being transported between stockpiles (either voluntarily, or in haste, after a police raid). There’s just too much to do for Joly to take any sort of break. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’ll just have to endure the bad luck. Bossuet does it and is fine; Joly will be, too. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The first place Musichetta and Bossuet go is Musichetta’s rooms, for just long enough to see that the paper with the spell is there, but half burnt. And the part that’s left isn’t anything they might find helpful: no, the part that’s left is the part that talks about the importance of proper wards.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Musichetta frowns down at it. “Maybe Jehan and Combeferre have something?” she says, only half sure of it. Knowing in the abstract that Jehan and Combeferre are researching spells that they could use in the coming revolution is one thing; actually attending meetings and knowing what kinds of spells they’ve found is another, and one she doesn’t have.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bossuet nods. “Yeah!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Combeferre says. “We weren’t really looking for anything that would </span>
  <em>
    <span>break</span>
  </em>
  <span> a spell.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Musichetta swears, and enjoys the look on Combeferre’s face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We could put some kind of poster up,” Musichetta says, as they walk back to her rooms. “‘Wanted: ways to reverse a spell.’ I could put out some kind of letter requesting ways to break a spell under my pseudonym.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bossuet shakes his head, and somehow doesn’t turn an ankle on the cobblestones when he looks away from putting his feet. “Never! Imagine, if the renowned Mlle. A——  was thought to have cast a spell that she didn’t intend! Your critics would be astonished!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Musichetta laughs. “I do have more than one pseudonym, you know. I could use Mlle. L——; she’s young and flighty.  And I’m sure I can say that it was intended. Perhaps research, for a new novel. Or I could make a new pseudonym, and a story about being a young and tragic victim of an unintended spell, maybe cast by a mysterious, shadowy enemy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bossuet nods. “Jehan would like the bit about shadowy enemies. But would they literally be shadowy, or just metaphorically.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Metaphorically, I think,” Musichetta says. “Otherwise I might receive light-casting spells, instead of spells for breaking spells.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She puts out the letter (Joly proofreads it, as usual and nearly sets it on fire, which is </span>
  <em>
    <span>Bossuet’s</span>
  </em>
  <span> usual), and gets no replies.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I shouldn’t have proofread it,” Joly says from where he’s lying on Bossuet’s bed, squashed between Bossuet and Musichetta. “I probably doomed it. Maybe they could smell my—Bossuet’s—whoever’s luck on it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nonsense,” Musichetta says. “It’s just because it was unlikely that anyone would have replied anyway; I don’t know any magicians.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Joly rolls over to stare at the ceiling. “I think that if it was happening to anyone else, I would have been overjoyed,” he says mournfully. “I would have gone to every public lecture on it, and I would have talked about it with Combeferre, and it would have been the biggest scientific discovery of the decade. But instead I‘m the one with the horrible luck. I’ve almost been arrested </span>
  <em>
    <span>three times</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and once while carrying all the cartridges for the new group Feuilly got us in contact with.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Musichetta puts an arm around his shoulders. “We’ll find a way to fix it,” she says. “And then you’ll be able to make it the biggest scientific discovery of the </span>
  <em>
    <span>century</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p><span>“Nah,” Joly says, starting to grin. “The century’s for whatever Jehan and Combeferre come up with. Though I could have the </span><em><span>second </span></em><span>biggest</span> <span>discovery of the century.”</span></p><p>
  <span>Bossuet snores. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And he can have the biggest snore of the century,” Joly says, and laughs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The solution, when Bossuet thinks of it the next morning, is horrifyingly simple. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What if,” he says, “I just made it up?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Joly blinks blearily. “What?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve got good luck now,” he says, nodding excitedly. “So if we make it so that the only thing controlling what we do is luck, then it’ll probably work.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Worth a try,” Musichetta says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah!” Joly says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bossuet grins, and closes his eyes. “We’ll use… </span>
  <em>
    <span>that!</span>
  </em>
  <span> And that! And uh, half of that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He opens his eyes. “What did I point to?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span> “Some ink, one of the letters ‘Chetta sent out, and the fireplace,” Joly says. “I don’t think those don’t sound very magical.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Luckily,” Musichetta says dryly, “they’re lucky. What should we do with them?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Huh,” Bossuet says. “Well, there was a paste in the original spell, right? So maybe we make a paste with all of them—maybe with the fireplace we can just use some ash?—and smear it on me and Joly?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure,” Musichetta says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The letter is difficult to make into a paste, but it can be ripped, and an ash-and-ink paste studded with little bits of paper is, according to Bossuet, “a pretty good paste.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Plus,” he adds, “maybe me choosing something that’s not very pasty is a symbol of the bad luck I’m going to get.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Joly looks worried, then. “You </span>
  <em>
    <span>are</span>
  </em>
  <span> alright with me giving you the bad luck?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bossuet grins. “Of course. I’m used to it; it was weird enough to have </span>
  <em>
    <span>good</span>
  </em>
  <span> luck.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good.” Joly smiles.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bossuet’s made up spell works, because he has good luck, and it ends with him dripping ash and ink and bits of paper all over the floor, because he’s got bad luck again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just my luck,” he says, happily, “to have chosen spell ingredients that would make such a horrible mess.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Joly grins. “Maybe we could find a spell to clean it up.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Musichetta rolls her eyes. “Or,” she says, holding out a rag, “we could use this and </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> risk any awful side effects.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That, too,” Bossuet agrees, taking the rag.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Comments (no matter how short!) and kudos make me super happy! &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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